


everything felt like a dream

by WilliamSage42



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Cannibalism, End of the World, Gen, I'm Sorry, Killing, Sad Ending, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 02:53:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15742692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilliamSage42/pseuds/WilliamSage42
Summary: When it happened, everything felt like a dream. Not a good dream, the sort of dream-like state of shock when something so horrendous happens you just can’t believe you’re there, that it’s happening, that it’s real.One minute you’re in the studio, your three best friends and your manager discussing business.The next the floor is rumbling. And the ceiling is cracking, and everything’s going to Hell.----End of the World/Apocalypse AU.No zombies, just a plethora of ridiculously destructive and near-impossible natural disasters all happening at once.Not a happy fic.





	everything felt like a dream

**Author's Note:**

> I gave this thing like one, quick little look-over so if there are editing issues, I'm sorry and please let me know.

When it happened, everything felt like a dream. Not a good dream, but the sort of dream-like state of shock when something so horrendous happens you just can’t believe you’re there, that it’s happening, that it’s real.

One minute you’re in the studio, your three best friends and your manager discussing business.

The next the floor is rumbling. And the ceiling is cracking, and everything’s going to Hell. 

We ran from the building as far as we could. 

Someone grabbed my hand as we ran. I looked up and met John’s eyes. 

He smiled at me, as if to say ‘it’s going to be alright’. I’ll always remember that smile, and I’ll always remember our smiles, the day it ended. 

George grabbed my other hand as we ran, and soon Ringo grabbed onto me, too, clinging desperately to the back of my jacket as we ran.

Bryan didn’t grab hold of me. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Actually I was too focused on running to notice George and Ringo were holding on too. 

When we slowed to a stop outside of the building, and turned around, checking everyone else was there, and I thought they were.

Bryan was running, he was centimetres from the exit when the building collapsed.

The great rumbling made my heart falter for a second. 

When the building came crashing down seconds before Bryan got out, it didn’t feel real. 

I couldn’t believe what happened, I felt numb. I suppose we all did.

People around us are running and screaming, but not because of us. 

It’s because of the earthquakes, and the burning rocks falling from the sky and the great tornadoes decimating from all directions. 

While the televisions still broadcasted and you could still find the odd one connected in an abandoned, torn up home, it was amusing, watching half the channels talk about horrific worldwide scientific phenomena and the other half scream manically about the wrath of god.

And then the power lines burned, and there was nothing anymore. 

We wandered away from the city after about a week. The debris was good shelter, but unstable in the storms and the earthquakes. 

And then there was the smell. 

So many people didn’t get out of buildings in time, and more died in the storms, and still more from debris in the air. 

Nobody came to collect the bodies, and they sat there and rotted. 

When the seventh day came we left the city, though where we were was not known to us, as the decimation had so warped the lands that it was not recognisable. 

During our time in the city we hadn’t spoken much. Only what was necessary. Conversation for leisure was a lost concept amidst the shock and utter devastation of the end of the world, as we knew it. 

We could pull cans of food from the rubble of the grocery stores and build fires to keep us warm, using the matches we had carried for our cigarettes, before the world ended. 

But when we left the city, we could no longer get our food so easily. 

For a while we were scouting back there every few days, one of us going to collect the food for the next while, and it went on like this. 

But eventually our own faults and the other survivors diminished the food supplies. 

Hardly anything was left. 

We picked over baked beans around the fire lit with our last match, and we listened to silence and each other’s breathing. 

Nobody dared speak for fear of the horrid pessimism on the tips of their tongues. 

Nobody except George. 

“How did this happen?” 

It was a question we were all going over in our minds; wondering just how something like this, something so evil, could happen so quickly, so suddenly, and then everything would be left broken. 

“I don’t know.” I whispered. 

“They’ll fix it, Georgie.” John said, patting the youngest Beatle on the back. “They’ve got to do something.” 

They did do something, in the end. 

It wasn’t what they should have done, nor was it what they had to do. It was horrible.

We hung around the edge of the city and Ringo went in to collect food. 

“Why’d you have to send me?” Ringo had complained. 

We were only just getting back into the swing of talking, now, and it seemed strange. It felt odd to talk so light-heartedly when the world was broken.

Now I wish we had reconsidered, thought about what Ringo was saying instead of being so selfish. I should have gone instead. But it’s too late, you can’t change the past. 

“Because we don’t like the smell.” John had argued, almost permanent cocky smile in place. 

“If it’s the smell that you don’t like, why would you send the biggest nose?” George murmured. 

“Oi! Bunch of sadists, you lot.” Ringo said. 

“Just go.” John said. 

Ringo turned to leave, and as he was going, I grabbed his shoulder. 

“It’s going to be alright.” I told him. Funnily enough, it seemed in those past weeks that the oldest Beatle needed the most comfort. 

I didn’t know what I was saying was a lie at the time. I already feel guilty enough, but that I said that to him, right before…

We’d been waiting at the city edge for Ringo for maybe 10 minutes. 

It was quiet until it wasn’t. 

From the city, noises came. People screamed and grunted and yelled, and shots fired. 

People came running our way, screaming at us to go, escape. 

So we ran. 

We looked back on military people firing the survivors, bullets raining down upon crowds of survivors, scavengers drawn to the food source of the city ruins. 

And Ringo was with the others, running from them. 

We glanced back at him, and he screamed at us, “RUN.”

Some of the survivors lost their loved ones and threw themselves at the soldiers, screaming and fighting. 

When our friend - who we had sent there, who we had sent into danger - tripped, we all faltered. 

George ran, back towards the firing soldiers, but he’d barely got 10 yards before Ringo screamed, “RUN” for the last time. 

Not seconds after the scream, the rain of bullets reached Ringo, and he was silenced. 

We all wanted to go back, we all wanted to stay and mourn our friend, but we had to run. 

John and me had to drag George, kicking and screaming, as we ran. 

When we’d run far enough, we turned back. The soldiers we marching back to the city from whence they came. 

So we went back to just past the city edge. 

George looked down at Ringo’s body, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so hurt by just looking upon a friend. 

He looked empty, eyes dead and unfeeling. Broken, shattered, never to be fixed. 

Do I refer to Ringo or George? I refer to them both. Ringo’s lifeless body and George’s shards of sanity. 

I think it broke him, loosing his friend like that. 

There was a rustling, and George’s head snapped to the side to lay his eyes upon its source. 

One of the soldiers, but he was not holding a gun. 

Someone had brought him down, a knife jutted out of his leg and the black pants he wore were slick with blood. 

George walked up to him, and the anger he expressed was breathtakingly volatile. Yet he conducted himself calmly. It was abundantly clear now how Ringo’s death had shattered him. 

The youngest of us wrapped his fingers around the blade in the fallen soldier’s leg, and twisted it, violently. 

The soldier let out a sharp gasp. 

“Why?” George asked the injured man. 

The soldier grunted, and coughed. Blood from a bitten tongue bubbled between his lips. 

“WHY?” George yelled at him again. 

The soldier drew in a shaky breath. 

What he said next brought forth such a rage in me that I would not regret what I did to that man afterwards. I would not hate myself for what became of the injured soldier, because I allocated his deserved punishment, no, I allocated less. He deserved much worse, and so what I did was merciful, in the end. 

“Too many people, not enough food.”

“Too many people?” George whispered. “There was barely anyone left!” 

And then he pulled out the blade. 

“George, he’s going to bleed to death.” John said. 

I didn’t understand how John of all people was the calm one now. 

“So what?” George muttered. 

All I knew was that the world felt it was closing in around me. 

Too many people, not enough food. Too many people, not enough food. Too many people, not enough food. Too many people, not enough food.

I screamed at the injured soldier, “WE COULD HAVE MADE DO!” 

I pulled the bloodied knife from George’s hands, and I brought it down into the soldier’s chest. 

He died with the first stab, I think. But I kept going, over and over into his chest, my hands were wet and sticky with blood, and splashes of red decorated my dirty clothes and face. 

Like I said, I cannot regret it. He killed my friend, he deserved much worse. I offered him mercy. 

When I got off the soldier and dropped the weapon, everything was quiet there for a few holy moments. 

“What…” John began. “What are we going to eat?” 

There was the silent acceptance that the city was no longer safe. The soldiers were there. 

In a sickening moment, George met John’s eyes, and then he tilted his head to look down at the soldier. 

His eyes snapped back up to John’s. 

I realised the meaning of this silent exchange, and though I had just taken a life, I gagged and tasted bile at the thought of what… that thing George was suggesting without words. 

“No!” I said. 

They both looked at me. 

“No, no, no, no, no…” I spoke the word of denial a hundred times over; it became almost an unconscious exercise for a single moment. 

John looked sick, but he spoke with logic, not emotion. 

“What else do we have?”

I didn’t understand how a man so driven by passion, emotions, nonsensical human urges, was so sane, so level in this time of insanity and unbalance.

“There’s got to be some plants, some cans left, something.” It felt like I was pleading with the universe, here. 

It felt like I was begging the God to deliver on a request, even though he never does. 

“There’s nothing.” George said. 

“Fine.” I gave up on the hopeless, just this once. If I’d given up on the hopeless every time, I would have killed myself on the second day of the end of the world. 

I picked up the knife, and handed it to john. 

I watched, transfixed, as the ugly, painful emotions crossed his face while he butchered the soldier. 

That night we ate quietly. Our fire was small, because like George said, light attracts pests. Pests with guns and precious blood on their hands. 

None of us thought about what we were eating. 

But by the 128th day, fresh corpses were much easier to find than animals and plants. 

It’s terrible to admit, but we were numbed to the horrors of… that, by then. 

The temperature slowly rose, higher and higher as the days passed. We no longer needed matches or to sit there carefully hand-starting flames, because it was warm enough to get by. 

Except when we cooked, and that was maybe five times on a good week. 

But now there was thirst to worry about. 

We stayed close to rivers and lakes when we could. The water was dirty, but we hadn’t the time or abilities to leave us with the rights complain about it.

The sun grew larger in the sky with every passing hour. 

George didn’t get back the light in his eyes, not since the day of the injured soldier and Ringo’s, well…

As we trekked on through the marred civilisation, John and I would stop to recognise the cruel beauty of the sunsets, the dewy grass, and the broken, twisted metal of the shells of buildings. 

George only looked down. 

Though there was horror in the beauty, it was there. George was too gone to see it. 

He cried silently, sometimes, as the sun burned and blistered our once-fair skin under the tatters of our shirts and the heat buried deep into the skin to make a home there, aching and persistent, forever it seemed. 

And on the night of the 142nd day, I woke up to laboured breathing and soft whimpers. 

John was still and breathing softly, curled up at my side. He looked vulnerable in the pale light. 

Of course, the sun never really set anymore, and it was more difficult with every passing day to know when to stop and sleep, but the pale light brushed over his calm face and all was well for those few moments. 

Then I turned. 

George kept the knife from the injured soldier. 

If I’d known what for, I wouldn’t have let him. 

His wrists were slit down, and blood streamed from the wounds as his fingers slowly lost their grip on the blade’s handle. 

“Oh Georgie.” I whispered, tears came, as I knew he was too late for saving. 

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of fate.” He whispered. “I deserved the choice.”

“Geo-eorge.” My words jerked on my sobs. 

I clutched his wrists in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding. 

“In a world like this,” whispered George, “I deserved the choice.” 

He died smiling. 

When John woke up and saw, his eyes widened and he shook ever so slightly. 

“If it’s any consolation,” I told him, “In a world like this, he deserved the choice.” 

We decided that day, that though we knew not where we were or what way to go, we’d journey home. 

Neither of us admitted, but both of us new, that we were going home to die. 

 

We held hands as we walked, day after day the harsh sun drying the sweat off our skin. 

Most days we slept when we were tired and ate when there was food. 

Fresh bodies became rarer and rarer. 

On the 163rd night, we slept on a bed of dead grass; the sky was light above us like it had been for weeks now. 

We held each other close in the warm, and comforted each other through the terrors of the harsh reality.

On the evening of the 200th day, we ‘celebrated’ the sick becoming of the world into this twisted mania. 

The husk of the home we’d come across most recently in search of brief shelter held some of the only alcohol we’d seen since the day the world ended. 

So we drank and we cried, but we didn’t forget. We would never forget what an unforgiving, sadistic world we lived in. 

If there was a God, if he is still out there, he must turn away from us in shame. 

The things we’d done, killed, cannibalised, survived over all the thousands of men, women and children who deserved so much better than this. 

Why, I wondered carelessly, foggily as the sun started getting brighter again, why did we come out on top? 

Why it was, it had nothing to do with us being special or lucky. Whoever had bent fate in this way was laughing at our suffering. 

On the day before it happened, the sun had burned and I had felt the dryness in my throat and mouth so furiously I wondered if it would have been sated, had I cut my palm and drank my own blood. 

The day before it happened, everything was a blur. The air in front of us was distorted by heat above the ground of this once cold, wet land. 

The sun didn’t even get less bright that night, not like the mildly darker nights of before. 

The day it happened the sun was large as anything in the sky, bearing down upon us, threatening its might. I had lost count of the days by then, but out of hopeless wanderings, we were there. 

We didn’t know how we knew, but we did. Perhaps somehow our minds brought back up the fallen buildings and we saw what once was calm and forgiving in comparison to this reality: home. 

We lay down on the road, the scorching asphalt burning its mark into our backs. But we were numb now. The sun grew, large and bright in the sky and our flesh felt like it might melt and bubble and burn away into crisp curls of blackened nothing. 

Colossal fields of broken buildings and imprints of a forgotten past now so far away surrounded us, brick dust blowing in the hot, dry wind over and around our frail bodies. 

The ruins of a prosperous society were burning, great plumes of smoke forming in the endless orange sky. 

None of it seemed to hold any weight in the distorted haze of this fevered daydream of a life. All that was here and now, and nothing but us seemed to exist. 

I turned and looked into his eyes. Our irises illuminated by the ever-impending sun, death, bright and connected. 

Tears welled in his eyes as he smiled at me, comfortingly. 

“I love you.” He said, and his voice was hoarse and barely more than a whisper.

The tears escaped the bonds of his eyes and trekked down his cheeks clearing pathways of soft, pink skin from under the muck and the grime coating him. 

A pang went through my chest and I reached out to him. 

“I love you too.” I said, wearily, dissociative almost. 

In that moment it was like this wasn’t happening. Like it was just us in a pool of nothingness and nothing else mattered. 

I clung to the tattered remains of his shirt and we rolled on the burning ground, grasping each other like nothing else mattered, holding each other close.

We held on so tightly, our faint smiles offsetting the tears streaming down our cheeks as the whole world around us was overtaken by blinding white light, and I could feel everything ending. Life, home, suffering… all but love. 

It hurt, oh god, it hurt, but he was there, and nothing else mattered. 

When it happened, everything felt like a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am aware this is a little fast-paced, but I tried my best. I'm sorry for breaking your hearts, if I succeeded in creating that effect.


End file.
